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Delay was sought in refugee resettlement last year, memo shows

With too many refugees in the pipeline and the budget for resettlement running dry, Tories sought to delay cases until 2015.

A memo sent to all Canadian missions last November, asking them to find people who could be held back from arriving in Canada until 2015 because there were too many refugees in the pipeline and the budget for resettlement was running dry, exempted Syrian refugees from the plan. (Bilal Hussein / the associated press)

By Stephanie LevitzThe Canadian Press

Thu., July 16, 2015

OTTAWA—The federal government sought to delay the arrival of refugees last year because it was running out of money.

A memo was sent to all Canadian missions last November, asking them to find people who could be held back from arriving in Canada until 2015 because there were too many refugees in the pipeline and the budget for resettlement was running dry.

Syrian refugees were exempted from the plan, according to documents obtained under the Access to Information Act.

“We are running into the problem (an enviable one in some ways) of hitting up against the limit of the (resettlement assistance program) budget we can spend this year,” Emina Tudakovic, a senior official at immigration headquarters in Ottawa, wrote to all missions handling refugee cases.

“In general, we are looking at rescheduling travel for any (government-assisted refugees) that you possibly can for 2015 . . . with the exception of Syria cases,” she added.

In 2013, the Conservatives pledged to resettle 1,300 Syrian refugees by the end of 2014. That followed a call from the United Nations for assistance handling what’s been deemed the world’s single-largest refugee crisis for almost a quarter-of-a-century.

But by the time the memo was sent in November 2014, less than 500 Syrians had actually arrived in Canada, and the Conservatives were facing daily calls both from the opposition and the public to speed up and make room for more.

“When it became clear that more funds would be needed to assist the very generous movement of (government assisted refugees) last year, CIC reallocated resources from within existing reference levels to meet the needs of eligible arrivals,” Nancy Caron, a spokeswoman for the Citizenship and Immigration department, said in email.

The department did not answer questions about whether the Syrian commitment was the reason the budget was maxing out, nor how many people from elsewhere were held back. It said those decisions were made by local missions and statistics were not available.

“Logistics can sometimes require small numbers of people to wait, but these decisions are made locally and always with the best interests of the people involved taken into consideration,” Caron said.

Recently released statistics show 7,574 refugees were admitted last year, a record-high for the Conservatives. The previous two years saw historic lows in part because of the closure of the Canadian embassy in Damascus that had been handling the lion’s share of refugee resettlement for the Middle East.

Still, it took until March 2015 for the government to meet its 2013 commitment to the 1,300 refugees, which it did by sponsoring more through government channels than it had intended.

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